Spiderman 3

Watched Spiderman 3 last night again for the first time since I saw it at the movies. It’s the weakest of the three, I think; too long, and not quite sure who its real villain is. There’s a choice of three: Thomas Haden Church as the Sandman, who’s connected into the story by seemingly being the man who murdered Peter’s uncle (although the actor isn't actually in the first film); there’s Harry, played by James Franco, Peter’s old friend, whose father was chasing after Peter in the first movie, and there’s the reporter/photographer (Topher Grace – Topher?) turned baddie (towards the end) who’s been humiliated by Peter when the latter shows him as having photo-shopped a scoop photo. He just happens to be on the spot when Peter is divesting himself of the black goo that’s invading his life.
But the film suffers from two bigger storyline flaws: the reason the convict becomes the Sandman is purely incidental: a piece of sci-fi stuff that means nothing within the context of the movie. And the stuff that falls out of the sky and turns Peter ‘bad’ when it takes over as his second costume. Where does it come from? We’re never given any explanation, just as we’re given no explanation as to why the convict should turn to sand. Criminal motivation here is a bit less than reasonable!
Apart from all that, Peter Parker is a twat. He's not just a geek, he's a dillbrain in the girlfriend department. He has Mary Jane twisted around his little finger, and manages to trip and stumble and stutter so much in the relationship that she goes off with his best friend. Hello??

Michael Chabon

In a sense, Chabon writes, "all literature, highbrow or low, from the Aeneid onward, is fan fiction. That is why Harold Bloom's notion of the anxiety of influence has always rung so hollow to me … . All novels are sequels; influence is bliss." Influence is bliss because reading is bliss, and one of the gifts this book [Maps and Legends: Reading and Writing Along the Borderlands] brings is its exploration of writers—as varied as Cormac McCarthy and Philip Pullman—for whom other books, previous books, are living beings with which (with whom) we converse and from whom we draw both instruction and delight. They have the breath of life in them, like Adam inspired by God, or the golems brought to life by the rabbis of old.

Books as living beings....I might not have quite put it like that, but it rings as a truth.

The quote is from Alan Jacobs' article on Michael Chabon (co-screenwriter of number 2 in the Spiderman series and author of numerous books).

A matter of probabilities

If shrinking shirts is one of the most commonly-searched key phrases on this site – don’t ask me why – then drug rehab must be one of the least. I’ve just checked out HitTail, looking for a trace of this phrase, and there’s not one to be found. ‘Charity shop bolivia nc’, yes; ‘celia cromer wedding’, yes; ‘bugs flies compost pile’, yes; ‘all sort of home kitchen crowl insect’ – surely that must be ‘crawl’ – yes.

But nothing about drug rehab. Yet drugs and drug rehab is something I’ve written about a number of times, for various reasons.

The infinite puzzles of the Internet, eh? Who can fathom the mind of the Google Spider, or deduce her ways?

Plainly then, there’s more real concern about shrinking shirts in this world than about drug rehabilitation. Maybe it’s just that more people wear shirts than take drugs? I guess in terms of probabilities, that would be the case. Or maybe HitTail has a problem with drugs?

The other rather curious thing about key word phrases and my blog is that Henry Lewis Gates is fairly high on the list. Off the top of my head I couldn't recall who he was; nor did I remember writing about him. I had to go back through the blog itself to check him out and find he’s mentioned rather ironically as having misquoted Burns by saying it was Shakespeare who talked about his love being like a red, red rose.

He's rather more important than that -which might account for so many people looking for him.

Not quite so celebratory

From the sublime reaches of theology to the elasticity of Spiderman – Spiderman 3, no less.
My wife and I went to see it last night – even made the effort to see it on the big screen, along with twenty other people. The spiritual underpinning continues, with forgiveness well to the fore at the end of the movie, and with lust for evil well-expressed (one character even ‘praying’ for Spiderman’s death). There’s also a lovely visual moment when Spiderman is seen as a gargoyle on the outside of a church steeple.
But beyond the spirituality? It’s an odd film: three villains coming and going, Spiderman having to find out who he is and how dark his dark side is - and still not getting the girl…quite. The fight scenes are even more comic book than before, and stretch credibility to its limits - though they’re extraordinarily well staged. But a number of shots of someone being hammered into something much harder than they are, and of people dropping from heights and getting up after a quick shake of the head, and people surviving explosions. Well, it’s all just a bit much. I don’t think it quite matches number two, and number two didn’t quite have something that number one had. What I think that was, was celebration! Spiderman the first was so celebratory that I went and saw it twice, evangelistically taking someone else with me. Toby Maguire was so boyish in the role then and Kirsten Dunst was just so lovely. But this third movie requires them to trade on those qualities again and again, without any real development. Maguire is now 32 and even though he still looks boyish, there must be a limit to how much longer he wants to go on playing a child/man. You get the feeling he wants to break out in this movie, and yes, he does break out, but it’s only to go back to the Spiderman/Toby that he was at first. There isn’t any real forward movement.
Sam Raimi is a great director of this kind of movie, and deserves plenty of credit. But I just didn’t feel moved by the film, in the way I was moved at the first in the series.